PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 37 



tent to open a new channel for the river, or to cause a 

 portion of it to flow over the Grimsel Pass, and down the 

 vale of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he would have deemed 

 a miracle, and he did not come to ask the Creator to per 

 form miracles, but to do something which he manifestly 

 thought lay quite within the bounds of the natural and 

 non-miraculous. A Protestant gentleman, who was present 

 at the time, smiled at this recital. He had no faith in the 

 priest s blessing, still he deemed his prayer different in 

 kind from a request to open a new river-cut, or to cause 

 the water to flow up-hill. 



In a similar manner we Protestants smile at the honest 

 Tyrolese priest, who, when he feared the bursting of a 

 glacier-dam, offered the sacrifice of the mass upon the ice 

 as a means of averting the calamity. That poor man did 

 not expect to convert the ice into adamant, or to strengthen 

 its texture so as to enable it to withstand the pressure of 

 the water ; nor did he expect that his sacrifice would cause 

 the stream to roll back upon its source and relieve him, by 

 a miracle, of its presence. But beyond the boundaries of 

 his knowledge lay a region where rain was generated, he 

 knew not how. He was not so presumptuous as to expect 

 a miracle, but he firmly believed that in yonder cloud-land 

 matters could be so arranged, without trespass on the 

 miraculous, that the stream which threatened him and his 

 flock should be caused to shrink within its proper bounds. 



Both these priests fashioned that which they did not 

 understand to their respective wants and wishes. In their , 

 case imagination wrought, unconditioned by a knowledge 

 of laws. A similar state of mind was long prevalent 

 among mechanicians ; many of whom, and some of them 

 extremely skilful ones, were occupied a century ago with 

 the question of a perpetual motion. They aimed at con 

 structing a machine which should execute work without 

 the expenditure of power ; and many of them went mad 



